Chemical, physicochemical, microbiological and sensory characterization of cow and buffalo ghee

Carolina Pena-Serna,Luis Fernando Restrepo-Betancur

doi:10.1590/fst.32219

Abstract

Abstract Due to the increasing consumption of ghee in the Western countries, a complete characterization of buffalo and cow ghee was performed to complement and update the available literature. Ghee is a lipophilic dairy product with 98.9% lipids, 0.3% water and less than 0.9% nonfat solids. Fatty acids are the major lipid fraction and represent 85.1% and 83.65% for buffalo and cow ghee, respectively. More than 52% of the fatty acids were saturated, and palmitic (24-28.8%), stearic (9.4-14%) and myristic (8.5-10%) acids were predominant. Monounsaturated fatty acids were approximately 23.8% and the major component was oleic acid. Polyunsaturated fatty acid content was 2.45% (buffalo) and 4% (cow). The vaccenic acid (2.18%) and the conjugated linoleic acid (CLA cis-9, trans-11) with a concentration of 0.77% in buffalo and 1% in cow ghee, were the main ruminant trans fatty acids. The physicochemical and microbiological characteristics of cow and buffalo ghee complied with the literature and national regulation. Finally, the sensory profile of buffalo and cow ghee was defined with a predominantly lactic odor, followed by cooked and fatty notes. The taste was characterized as fatty, lactic, sweet and cooked; and the texture was described as fatty with fatty mouthfeel, lumpy and greasy notes.

Highlights

Ghee known as clarified butter, is an ancient dairy product prepared by heating milk, cream or butter over 100 °C to evaporate water and precipitate the nonfat solids (Andrewes, 2012; Antony et al, 2018; Sharma et al, 2010; Sieber, 2005)
Due to the lipophilic composition of ghee, as well as the scientific evidence of the association between fats intake and the risk of coronary disease (Ford et al, 2016; Galvín et al, 2016; Vučić et al, 2015), and the increasing trend on ghee consumption exhibited by the Western countries (Antony et al, 2018), the current study aims to characterize buffalo and cow ghee in terms of the proximate composition, and the physicochemical, microbiological and sensory characteristics to be a basis for the analysis and discussion regarding ghee consumption and the benefits or risks to human health and nutrition
According to Ganguli & Jain (1972) and Sserunjogi et al (1998), the moisture and lipid content of ghee should be below 0.3% and above 96%, respectively; the proximate composition of cow and buffalo samples complied with the reported values

Summary

Introduction

Ghee known as clarified butter, is an ancient dairy product prepared by heating milk, cream or butter over 100 °C to evaporate water and precipitate the nonfat solids (Andrewes, 2012; Antony et al, 2018; Sharma et al, 2010; Sieber, 2005). Ghee is considered a good source of lipophilic vitamins (Upadhyay et al, 2017a), especially vitamin A and E (Antony et al, 2018), and conjugated linoleic acid – CLA (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2013; Mehta et al, 2015; Upadhyay et al, 2017b), which is a ruminant trans fatty acid (rTFA) that has exhibited health benefits, both in vitro and in vivo (Galvín et al, 2016), such as anti-obesity, anti-carcinogenic, anti-atherogenic, anti-diabetic, anti-mutagenic, anti-hypertensive, immunomodulatory, apoptotic and osteosynthetic (Hur et al, 2017; Koba & Yanagita, 2014; Serafeimidou et al, 2013; Yang et al, 2015)

Methods

Results

Conclusion